


Civil

by lasergirl



Category: 28 Days Later
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:07:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Civil

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |  [28 days later](http://coelogyne.livejournal.com/tag/28%20days%20later)  
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_**28 Days Later: Civil**_  
**Title:** Civil  
**Fandom:** _28 Days Later_  
**Pairing:** Jim / Major West  
**Rating:** Mature  
**Warnings:** Infected (blood, vomit, etc) and m/m smut  
**Notes:** A short fic for [](http://guede-mazaka.livejournal.com/profile)[**guede_mazaka**](http://guede-mazaka.livejournal.com/) where I try to show you *can* write consensual Jim/West sex and not lose characterization. Or, apparently, hotness. HAH!

Civilization looked like a concentration camp to Jim. The mines and razor may have been directed outwards at the Infected, but the big country house had a forbidding look all the same. Whether they knew it or not, all of West's soldiers were prisoners there. They had banded together in courage at the start, but the men's faces were pinched with fear. If not for the Major, the whole little shelter would have broken apart in the second week of the onslaught.

"We were on manuvers when we got word," West said. He led Jim through the basement hallways, past dusty shelves of tinned food. His booted feet echoed sharply in the gloom. "We had orders to hole up here, but the old lady who owned the place... silly bitch... wouldn't believe me when we came. She got bitten first by one on the grounds."

Jim followed silently behind him, reading labels, leaving fingerprints in dust half an inch deep on tins of soup and peas.

"Had to shoot her. Wasn't pretty." They were nearing daylight again, up a flight of cement stairs. Jim reckoned they must be near the back of the house. There was a strange smell hanging in the air. West turned to him. "It was disposing the bodies that made it dangerous, something in the smell that makes them come to you. Like they know there's recent dead, that there's live ones waiting." He pushed open a heavy wooden door that opened onto a walled courtyard. The smell was stronger. Jim tried to hold his breath, stepped outside.

A sudden rush and rumble of a moving body, and something horrible rushed at him. Jim leapt back against West and choked on his scream. A heavy soldier, his body twisted in disease, writhed at the end of a long chain. He rolled his bloody eyes, filthy fingers clutching at air. West clucked his tongue dryly.

"This is Mailer. Say hello."

Mailer retched and fell to his knees, vomiting dark torrents of blood. Jim felt his knees trembling.

"What... why are you keeping him here?"

West looked sadly down his long nose at the muddy, spitting body on the ground and ushered Jim back into the house.

"Is is because you think you can cure him? How many people could he infect? Are you mad?" Jim grabbed West's uniform front and tried to shake him. It was like moving a stone. "He could kill us all! We're not safe!"

"That chain will never break," West's hands came down over Jim's. His grasp was hot and tough, the fingers wiry and strong. "You think I'm a monster for keeping him here. When he got bitten... I couldn't leave him. I thought something might cure him." There was a look then, in his eyes that Jim recognized as regret. West sighed, and the tension and arrogance shrank away from him.

"Despite what the Infected have done to us all, you didn't kill him?" Jim had seen Selena hack up a man before his eyes, before he'd even had a chance to manifest the disease. Frank had the sense to force his daughter away from him before Jim and had stepped up with the baseball bat and... "You didn't have any problem shooting Hannah's dad this morning."

"Well." West's eyes were dark and downcast. His grip loosened a little on Jim's hands, but he didn't move away. "Captain Mailer... I suppose in any other situation I'd probably be drummed out of the army, but in a crisis it doesn't matter. Philip and I were close. It wasn't widely known. I saw the look in his eyes after the old bitch bit him and I just..." His voice broke into a hoarse scratch. "I can shoot a man dead in front of his child, but I couldn't kill my lover."

"Oh." Jim breathed. The silence of the basement hallway was pressing in on them both. He could hear his own breath whistling in his nostrils.

"So now you know."

West's chest was warm against Jim's hands, and he smelled of shaving soap. It was such a civilized scent that it was completely out of place. Here they were at the end of the world, and there were beds, hot water and razors.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Jim said weakly. West sighed and blinked back the memories, his hands shifting their touch along Jim's forearms, across his shoulders. Terror had knotted the muscles along his neck.

"You're shaking," remarked West. He spread his fingers out and spanned the places where it ached. "I don't mean to hurt you."

It was wrong in his head, but Jim leaned into the touch. "You aren't." He felt West's breathing, his muscles rising and falling beneath his uniform. He was just a man. Just another scared, mortal man fighting against the monsters out there. By all rights, West should be shaking just as much as he was. Maybe he was.

Jim popped a button on the camo shirt and slid a hand inside. His fingers found the ribbed undershirt, and underneath that, warm skin over muscle. Two more buttons and he spanned West's hips. The Major let out a soft hiss, a breath that Jim felt on his forehead. He turned his face upwards, eyes closed, and sought out West's mouth. The kiss was awkward and tasted of fear at first, but West made a tiny noise like a whimper and leaned in again. It was desperate then, a little too rough and a little too fast, but there was no stopping. Jim pushed West against the crumbling wall, momentum carrying them together, hands on skin, mouths on mouths, concrete against spine, against shoulders, against skull.

West knew what he was doing; his hands were at Jim's trousers, coaxing the zipper open, at his own flies, rushing and swearing under his breath at his growing arousal. His fingernails raked against Jim's chest when he knelt, boots clattering against the cement floor. Jim gasped as the Major's mouth teased his own cock from his pants, sending shivers of pleasure running through him.

West had one hand on himself, the other clutching at Jim's hipbone hard enough to leave marks. Jim gasped at the flare of pain, but couldn't pull away. He quivered, bracing himself against the wall with both hands, while West squirmed beneath him. The events of the last two days, it had all been so much. Jim's head was spinning, the horror and the sickness mixing with the creeping pleasure he could feel starting on the soles of his feet. West was a man possessed. He was a man at the ends of the earth, frightened, alone, and now this....

With a cry, Jim's body exploded into orgasm, and he grabbed at West's clothing to stay upright. West grunted below him, until with a moan he came as well, the both of them wanting everything and nothing, the apocalypse staring them both in the face. Jim collapsed against West and they both curled there at the base of the wall, shivering, catching their breaths.

"How do you do it?" Jim asked when the blood rushing in his ears had slowed. "I mean. You're all alone out here. You don't even know if help is coming."

"I have to believe that, even if my men don't," West said hollowly. And Jim saw it all laid out for him: West ruled because his men were afraid. They would have fragmented long ago if he'd not encouraged it. For them, Major West was their God, and as long as he held that power, the little unit would stay together. "They believe we are safe because I say we are. I will never tell them differently. I love those boys. They don't deserve to die here."

Jim shook his head, touching the Major's close-cropped hair. It prickled beneath his palms, strange and familiar all at once. "Do they love you too?"

West smirked and the tough, arrogant soldier look came back over him like a mask. "They don't know love. Only sex and fear will keep them in line."

Jim said "Sex?" in a scared, little-boy voice.

"Oh, yes," said the Major, rising from the floor and brushing his uniform into proper order. "You mustn't underestimate your value. Or those of your lady friends." He laughed, and the noise rang like a hammer on iron, harsh and cruel.

Maybe Jim had been right about the concentration camp after all. He'd just gotten the enemy wrong.

Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


End file.
